Millionaire TradersQ: How did you start in trading? What was your first market?
A: Basically I started in equities. My background was in math-
ematics. So it was easy for me—to understand the quantitative
nature of the markets. I would just get daily graphs and go through
the numbers and look at the market in a quantitative way.
Q: What was your profession when you started to get involved
in the stock market? Were you an engineer by trade?
A: No, actually, when I started trading I was still in high school.
My mom opened an account with my money and threw in a little of
her own. Then I started to trade. I was always good at mathematics;
I was basically just good at making money.
Q: You started making money right away?
A: Yes, in a sense, I used William O’Neal’s strategy of picking
stocks. I would pick a company where I would buy 300 to 400
shares. I would stick with them for several months and that just
seemed to work. I would find a company with expanding earnings
and go from there. They were small-cap stocks. You know$5,$6,
$7 stock, always under 10. Then they’d go up to like$14 or$ 15
over several months. That type of trading just went on for several
years. Basically that’s how I got started, but my background is not
engineering, I studied psychology and in psychology I was enrolled
in an experimental quantitative program that had a lot of statistics.
We did a lot of analysis with multiple-regression equations, time-
series analysis, factor analysis, and things like that. So I just applied
that to the stock market. I obviously studied charting and technical
analysis. I really got in-depth, trying to understand all aspects of
the market and I actually went and worked for an investment bank
that took a couple of companies public. Then I went to work for
another firm, in Beverly Hills that had high-net worth clients that
day traded big blocks.